There will be a new group of people called the unbanked, who will trade and start their own business bypassing all the red tape that traditional financial institutions have come to be associated with.

This exact scenario will ‘play out in the future. At the moment, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin still make up a relatively small portion of the global financial markets. In fact, they’re less than 1% of the Trillions dollars in traditional financial markets like Gold.

Bitcoin has been clearing more tx volume than global gold markets since early 2017.

BTC: on pace to process $1.1 trillion in 2018 transactions
Gold: on pace to process $0.4 trillion in 2018 transactions

Imagine this scenario, Homer works in a beer factory in Boston. He uses only Bitcoin for all his money. When Homer gets paid at the end of the week by the company, he receives his monthly salary into his long term Bitcoin storage called a Ledger Nano S.

He does this by simply giving his Bitcoin wallet address on his first day of employment with the Beer company.

How does he track whether he gets paid like clockwork at the beginning of each month?

The co-owners, Alice, Daniel and Lee can securely manage the company’s assets by having multiple cosigners as an extra-layer of security before sending out any bitcoin.

Private keys remain safe inside their company’s Ledger Nano S. There is no need to be paying monthly fees to banks to for their services and to protect their assets.

When Alice needs to pay her staff in North America, or any other business expenses, she pays into a Bitcoin escrow service with the company’s multi-signature wallet.

Only after her purchased goods cleared inspections, she can then release payment.

When Alice intends to buy new raw supplies of barley, she can get her buyers to agree on a deal and then hand over a Bitcoin Credit Stick Wallet, called OpenDime.

“Deal agreed for $100,000 worth of raw barley.”

She can easily scan the address on her Ledger app, and within seconds, the OpenDime stick registers $100,000.

What follows is the barley supplier uses his Samourai Wallet to verify whether the Bitcoin is indeed inside his OpenDime Wallet.

OpenDime wallets are widely used because it is error-free, easy to setup, near-indestructible and can carry amounts ranging from nothing to millions/billions.

The deal is now completed without needing a middle man to get involve and take a portion of the transaction.

Bitcoin is an opportunity to shakeup the financial playing field. I do think BTC has a chance of ending the current 100+ year old monopolies.

Now, Tanya is from Zimbabwe, her sister Theresa send bitcoins to her every single month from Paris.

She goes to a local convenience store and buys an Azteco Voucher with Euros and redeems her voucher directly to her sister’s Samourai Wallet in Zimbabwe.

The fees are so low, that she can afford to send her bitcoins without losing a portion of her salary each month.

Her sister in Zimbabwe can now manage and spend the bitcoins she receives on sites like Purse.io where she gets to purchase all sorts of things even if she is living is a severely financially restricted country. Nobody can ever reject her business because her bitcoin is as good as any others’ bitcoin.

10 Bitcoin Wallets to Start Using Immediately for your Business

As e-commerce sets to grow even bigger this coming decade, the only way for buyers and sellers to conduct trade has to take place on a trusted site/platform like Ebay, Amazon or even Alibaba. People got used to giving away all their private information in order to trade.

As a result, giant multinational corporations grew bigger and bigger until they became a giant honeypot of private information and data.

It was a real commercial friction point: every time you wanted to buy something you had to fill out your credit card information, plus your billing address and, if it was different, your shipping address as well. And once you had done that, your information would be vulnerableto hackers.

Peer-to-peer, decentralized electronic currency will solve all these issues.

Services like OpenBazaar.org is ushering in this new age of decentralized, peer-to-peer eCommerce.

Lee in China, who wants to sell his toys in the US will just need to download and install OpenBazaar where he can immediately list his toys inside an in-built search engine within the software.

He then sells his toys directly to a buyer without any middlemen taking a cut of his profits.

The buyer in the US sends Bitcoin to his wallet address by following Lee’s listed instructions. He does not need to reveal any other private information, like his name, etc. Address may be needed for Lee to deliver to his doorstep.

Both buyer and seller can also take advantage of OpenBazaar’s Multisignature escrow to manage any disputes that arise from the trade.

In a decentralized eCommerce platform such as this, the usage of a moderator is key to ensuring that the deal goes through without a hitch.

For a trade that requires meeting up face to face to do a local pickup;

the buyer can simply scan the QR code of the seller,

type in the amount of BTC and

press send after receiving the item.

Chip and Pin Two Factor Authentication devices.

This compared to juggling with 2FA devices with a laptop or a mobile device. Plus ensuring all the minute details like the account name, number, swift code and bank were accurate.

Not only that, the buyer will risk typing in his pin code publicly in order to authenticate the transfer of funds. In doing so, jeopardizing his entire mother-load of funds inside his bank account.

Using the Samourai Watch only wallet, the buyer doesn’t expose any of his private keys at any point in time during the trade, thereby making the entire process efficient, secure and private.

PayPal made internet commerce pretty darn close to frictionless. It is still better than bank accounts by many orders of magnitude, but still required many compromises. PayPal ended up turning into another mega-centralized corporation who gets to decide who does and who doesn’t get to play ball (exclusivity).

The technology (Blockchain and Proof-of-work) never existed back then for PayPal. Instead, they created a series of workarounds, some features better than others. But essentially still needed access to your bank or credit card account to make purchases or send money across borders.

We still spend an awful lot of time filling out our private credit card information whenever we want to buy something online. And these services that ties our identity to our account are always vulnerable to hacks and susceptible to identity thefts.

Have we gotten so comfortable and used to the way we trade and do business that we have grown ignorant?

I for one believe we are so. Progressive and financially troubled countries seem to be the first of the lot to see the huge potential that Bitcoin has to offer the world. Whereas the comfortable majority seem to be the laggards of disruptive technology adopters.

With the invention of bitcoin, you can be sure the incumbents will be disrupted.

There is an infinite number of variations where bitcoin can fit perfectly into each scenario. Above all else, anyone who embraces them before the technology turns mainstream stands to benefit the most.

In this version of the future, every bitcoin user is always in total control of their own wealth and savings. No one, not even the government can have any say on that.

All your money is secure on its own and trade can be carried out even more flawlessly than before, removing redundancies and rent-seekers along the way.

Our Badass Curated List of Cryptocurrency Wallets

Bitcoin and Altcoin Hardware Wallets

Bitcoin Advocate, Evangelist, Author and Speaker Andreas Antonopoulos; a network security specialist suggests that Hardware wallets are the best option right now for the average joe.

I’ll go on the record and say the Hardware Wallets are better than software and paper wallets for all except a handful of opsec/infosec experts. Security isn’t about absolutes. It’s all relative and complexity/operator skill are of the utmost importance.

While this wallet gives you full control over your bitcoins like the other hardware wallets, the price tag is way more expensive. The device is built to give it a premium look over its competitors but still lacks in terms of development and support.

Bitcoin and Altcoin Mobile Wallets

A perfect companion for your Ledger Nano S or your Trezor, the Sentinel wallet watches your secure hardware wallets without asking for any of your private keys. In fact, it allows you to track multiple wallets at the same time as well as specific bitcoin addresses.

Whenever you request a payment to be sent to your hardware wallet, this app is a great addition to maintain your privacy and keep your funds secured at all times.

Need to Know:

Only supports Bitcoin on Android.

This app is still WIP and still has many bugs.

This project is spearheaded by huge privacy activists who are hellbent on making a Bitcoin wallet that doesn’t bend down to regulators and venture capitalist.

Mobile wallets have a ton of exciting new features but the trade off is always evident in hot wallets. You sacrifice security for features that give a digital wallet flexibility. So don’t store all your coins in a mobile wallet. Only keep enough for spending.

Trust wallet utilizes public APIs so you can also directly purchase ETH from exchange sites like Coinbase, Changelly and Indacoin without ever having to leave Trust. Your ETH will also be instantly inside your Trust wallet address without needing to leave the app. This however only works in supported countries.

The app also includes a Marketplace with a DApps browser in-built to allow you to search and exchange one token for another. With the Bancor network, you can also exchange ERC20 tokens for ERC223 tokens fluidly.

Security: 7/10

Having a dedicated app means that Trust can minimize a user’s exposure to phishing attacks. Did you know phishing attacks soared to over 500% in 2017 with web applications & social media?

Ease of Use: 9/10

Clear and concise information. No unnecessary excess of information to overload users. It was built with new users in mind.

Anonymity: 10/10

Trust do not collect any personal information. Does not store your details such as private keys and password on their servers.

CashApp originally started as a simple payment service like paypal, but CEO Jack Dorsey went on a mission to make Bitcoin the world’s single currency, hence he quickly implemented the instant buying and selling of bitcoin within the app.

Saying that the app is easy to navigate is an understatement. The minimalist design would allow its users to purchase up to $10,000 worth of Bitcoin a week in 4 simple steps. And they are offering it without charging any fees.

While simplicity is the heart design, you funds cannot be transferred without your Touch ID. This simple security method is non-existent in other mobile wallets. Assuming your mobile gets stolen, nobody can transfer your BTC.

Other than that, it’s extremely lightweight and you cannot deposit any BTC to store within the app. You can only buy bitcoin from within the app and sell whatever you have bought from within.

Bitcoin and Altcoin Desktop Wallets

The Exodus works on Linux, Windows and Mac. If you want to be in control of your private keys but need the versatility of a software based wallet that sits on your work computer, this is the only thing you need.

Exodus supports a huge variety of cryptocurrencies as well as tokens. And you will obviously love the amazing User Interface.

HD Wallet. Upon downloading and installing, you will receive a set of 12 recovery seed phrases where you can write it down to backup in case you lose access to your computer. You will also be given an option to create your access login password.

Exodus integrates an exchange within the app to allow you quick and instant crypto to crypto exchange.

Conclusion

With Cryptocurrency wallets, everyone is in total control of their own money, and they can do it from anywhere, at any time. When you send a transaction from your wallet to another, there’s always prove of the transaction on the blockchain, so there is no need for banks to verify or authenticate a transaction.

Bitcoin wallets can be used with small amounts as little as a few dollars to billions of dollars all transferred with the same amount of fee without any censorship or restriction.

The Cryptocurrency wallets I mentioned above are just some of the tools for the beginning of a new age of Decentralized digital peer-to-peer currency.

Which method do you think is more efficient? Using Bitcoin wallets, or doing a digital fiat bank transfer?

Bitcoin and the ecosystem that surrounds it is still in its nascent stages of growth. Its constantly evolving, improving and disrupting incumbent payment systems with its lightning network.

Bitcoin can be transferred to another wallet anywhere on Earth, in minutes even in remote places like Antarctica, war torn countries like Iraq and even economic calamities like Venezuela.

When was the last time you transferred money abroad, only to find it will take weeks to arrive and charges you a bomb for it. The last time I sent $80 from Singapore to the US, they charged me an additional $50.

Experiences like this make it crystal clear that Bitcoin is the way for the future. Banks and centralized corporations have grown either too fat with greed or ignorant of the way our world has evolved.

It is high time we change the way business is done for billions of people.

Lastly, if you enjoyed this posts, spread the gospel of what Bitcoin can do for your friends and family.

I Started hearing about bitcoin only in November 2017. As a solo-preneur who has build around the Maverick Philosophy, I found bitcoin to be just the tip of the spear. I watched to see who was getting into it, some of the smartest entrepreneurs who has made their fortunes being the first movers allocated portions of their investment portfolios to Bitcoin. I studied and realized that if it worked, bitcoin was going to be the first global decentralized currency. And that has never existed before. Ever. I was Hooked!